Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Pedersen, UK \(Ulrik\)" <[email protected]> · Wed, 6 Sep 2006 10:03:59 +0100

Just my £0.02 worth of thoughts on the topic of Qt/EPICS GUI...

Is this new Qt version of EDM a re-implementation of EDM, using Qt or is it a new set of CA-aware Qt widgets to use with Qt's fantastic "designer"?

I do favour the idea of taking advantage of the existing designer application from Trolltech and _just_ create a set of CA aware widgets (inherit most parts from the existing Qt widgets). 

If done carefully, the designer can be used in almost the same simple way as EDM: you dump your widgets on a form, set the PV properties, compile and run. There should be no need to get into the C++ code - but the option is there if special requirements exists... 

If a Python interface is then made for the Qt/CA widgets, even the compilation step can be taken out of the process...

About compatibility with EDM: the output format from designer is an XML description of the GUI. It should be possible to write a script that can parse the EDM/MEDM files and output a similar XML format which can be used by Qt/designer.

Cheers,
Ulrik

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  Ulrik Pedersen               phone: +44(0)1235-778580
  Software Engineer            email: [email protected]

      Diamond Light Source Ltd.
      Rutherford Appleton Laboratory,
      Chilton, Didcot
      OxfordShire OX11 0DE

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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System